Behavior and Technology for Learning Center

I spoke to the manager Larry today from the Huntington Learning Center in my town of Peachtree City, Georgia. I asked him how driven is their Learning Center regarding behaviorism and technology?

I will refer to him as Larry Manager. His response and our discussion ensued. "Skill building is the hero", Larry said. "If the teacher is not great, nothing will happen". He explained, we are in a sense more old fashioned. He continued that we use technology to help pinpoint student's curriculum needs. Technology needs to assist us where to go with the student, but again, they will not go far without a teacher that offers responsibility and interaction. He described Huntington Learning center as not a tutoring center where not just immediate problem solving happens but skill building for future subjects. Larry said we can see with the CAT tests if a student is improving or not. To learn about the philosophy about Huntington, go to: http://huntingtonlearning.com/page/philosophy.

Larry asked and answered the following questions; "Are they using their knowledge to the best of their abilities? Or are the behavior issues are what prevents them from succeeding?" Larry said the older the students become, the more difficult and resistant they are to effort. Behavior is 5% failure rate for their center. We discussed underlying factors that contribute to failures at their center. Often Larry says it is families that have not given their children consequences that often create behavior problems in their children. Student resistance and bad grades are just a control problem.

He pointed out this issue with this analogy: "If we take two dogs out for a walk and one does not want to walk and plops himself down, would we leave him in the middle of the street? No. Perhaps our students and our own children are scared about taking forward steps in their lives, and we have to as teachers and parents honker them down and move them along"(Larry Manager 2009).

Larry Manager also said that the *Georgia Virtual School http://www.gavirtualschool.org/Home/ParentInformation/tabid/141/Default.aspxhas offers more success for some students then repeating a class in school. Some students seem to do better with technology. *NOTE: Our state offers courses online for making up grades. This is called the Georgia Virtual School.

I conclude from talking with Larry and reading our Chapter 8, Reinforcing Effort, (Pitler,Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007) that students may come to realize effort comes from themselves and that they may take more responsibilities for their own success. I personally believe the primary grades can use moving cloths pins or stickers and bulletin boards for tracking their successes while upper grades would benefit from tracking and keeping their own effort and score charts.

For classes that teachers see all year, I think that Microsoft Excel data keeping and tracking is an added benefit to learning. It reinforces effort. As for myself , art as a subject is very subjective and personal. Using a Microsoft Excel sheet during a nine week period may not be advantageous. Rubrics for students to critique their own work may succeed best for art. I must keep in mind that I encourage out of the box thinking as well as problem solving techniques. Self-esteems are precious in my class.

If you have any suggestions for tracking scores and efforts in a quarterly middle school art class, I am open to hearing from you.

Victoria Perez